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BusyBee's Grading Assistant serves as a digital teaching aid, reviewing student written submissions and providing predictive grading, where it suggests feedback and scores based on the activity's content and rubrics.
The Grading Assistant saves teachers time by collaborating with them to give students meaningful responses. When it has suggested a score and feedback for a submission, it appears in the teacher's Needs grading screen, waiting for them to review the suggestions, make desired edits, and return the scores to students.
A sparkle icon appears for teachers next to all Grading Assistant suggested scores to let them know it has provided predictive grading.
BusyBee is a Buzz Add-on
If you are interested in trying BusyBee, reach out to your account manager.
What content can the Grading Assistant provide predictive grading for?
BusyBee's Grading Assistant can review and suggest scores and feedback for the following types of student work:
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Assignments and Custom activities where the activity is configured for students to submit work in one of the following ways:
- Enter their responses in Buzz's Comments box (check the Allow comments)
- Upload a PDF (select File in Allowed submission types and enter PDF as the allowed file type)
- Attach a Google file if Google Workspace is integrated (select Google file in Allowed submission types)
- Essay questions in Assessments. Try BusyBee Question Assistant to generate essay questions!
The Grading Assistant uses the following content sources to inform the scores and feedback it suggests:
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In Assignments and Custom activities:
- The Activity > Content field.
- Any Rubrics connected to the activity.
- Learning objectives aligned with the activity.
- The activity's Description field.
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In Assessments:
- The Essay question and Example answer.
- Any Attached Passage
- Any Rubrics connected to the Essay question.
- Learning objectives aligned with the assessment.
- The assessment's Description field.
Enable the Grading Assistant
When you enable the Grading Assistant, BusyBee automatically starts finding activities and providing predictive grading suggestions for teachers to review.
To enable the Grading Assistant for the courses in your domain and its subdomains:
- Open the domain Features screen.
- Toggle the Grading Assistant switch on the BusyBee card.
Disable the Grading Assistant for individual courses
You can disable the Grading Assistant for individual courses by:
- Opening Course settings for the course.
- Checking the Disable BusyBee grading assistant in this course box in Advanced options.
Disable the Grading Assistant for multiple courses with Bulk update
Administrators can control the Grading Assistant setting for multiple courses at once by creating a course template with the desired setting and applying that setting to the courses with the Courses > Bulk update tool.
In this example, we cover how to disable the Grading Assistant for multiple courses.
First, create a course template using a course where the Grading Assistant is disabled in its Course settings. Then, you can apply that setting to other courses:
- Open the Courses tool.
- Check the boxes for the courses you want to update and select Bulk update from the More menu.
- In the Template tab, select the template with the settings you want from the dropdown.
- Check the Options box. The Grading Assistant selection in your template is included with this.
- Updating Options also applies the following Course settings from the Template:
- Bulk updates are permanent and should be handled carefully to ensure you are editing the correct courses. Because of this, Buzz requires you to check the box reading:
- I have verified that the courses I am about to permanently update are the correct ones, and I confirm that I want to update them with the field values shown above.
- Click Update and the settings are applied to the courses you selected, above.
The Grading Assistant indicator
When the Grading Assistant is enabled, it automatically reviews student submissions and suggests scores and feedback. These suggestions are saved as a Draft in the Grade editor for the submission, so the teacher can review and/or edit them before returning them to the student.
A Grading Assistant indicator (a sparkles icon) appears with those submissions in the Gradebook, Grade editor, and Activity grader to let teachers know that BusyBee has made score and feedback suggestions.
Review and submit the Grading Assistant's suggestions
As with any student submission, the teacher is notified in Needs grading that the activity is ready to be graded. When the Grading Assistant indicator is present, you can review the following Grade editor fields to review its suggestions:
- The Points field under Essay questions in Assessments.
You can edit the suggestions and grade the submission as you would with any other. When you make changes or submit the grade, the Grading Assistant indicator disappears.
You can always review the Score/Activity history in the Grade editor to see where the Grading Assistant made suggestions.
Related articles:
- BusyBee: Your Intelligent Teaching & Learning Companion
- Question Assistant - BusyBee's companion for teachers
- Get Help - BusyBee's interactive tutoring tool
- Check My Understanding - BusyBee's self-quiz tool
- Review Key Concepts - BusyBee's flashcard learning tool
- Help My Student - BusyBee's companion for parents and observers
- How do I enable BusyBee tools for my domain?
- How do I enable BusyBee study tools for activities?
- Which activity types support BusyBee tools?